this is patch to allow switch the console to graphic mode early at boot time
the new flags is hint.sc.0.flags=0x01150180
where
0x100 - the flag for keyboard (used by default in freebsd)
0x80 - flag to switch the graphic console at boot(new flag)
0x0115 - the graphic mode that can be see from vidcontrol -i mode(new flag)
add this flag 0xXXX mode after testing with vidcontorl MODE_****
as example MODE_277 is 0x0115

I just gave it a go on my BETA2 install (Dell 1318 notebook, i386, Celeron(R) CPU 560 @ 2.13GHz) and it works OK.

I used the same hint (hint.sc.0.flags=0x01150180) you used because any resolution above 800x600 is way too high (1280x800, native resolution, would be unusable ... yet still it's not even available anyways). I couldn't figure out why "0x0115" if vidcontrol -i mode reports "0x115"?

So far the catch seems to be that the resolution goes up as soon as sc0 gets loaded (wich happens to be halfway through the boot process ... so the first half of the boot process looks big and the second half looks as expected at 800x600x32).

The only problem I found is that if I use "vesa" instead of "i915" I don't get the screen back when I resume from supend (acpiconf -s 3)